Lucian continued listening intently to the lesson, waiting for the teacher to speak even further. His mind was churning, practically begging to learn more about these so called mages. But no matter what, it seemed the teacher had no intention of mentioning them any further than just that brief introduction to the political landscape of this world.
He continued listening for the remainder of the lesson, but found that nothing else the teacher spoke about was of interest or use to Lucian. He didn’t even get to learn the names of the surrounding islands or continents, with the second half of the lesson being a complete and utter waste of his time.
But, he had to keep up appearances as ‘Lucian Verdan’ the cowardly and timid son of Knight Robert Vernon, so he made no verbal complaints or efforts to skip out on it.
Instead, he took the opportunity to return back to his dorm as soon as possible to learn more about this new life, and more importantly the things he had brought over with him from his previous world.
He was known as the failure of his father, with his older brother and sister taking the limelight all away from him. The best thing the original Lucian could have hoped for was to be sent to the Knight academy and become a normal, average knight to at least satisfy his father.
The original Lucian was quite a sad child, even the new Lucian could acknowledge this. He had no real friends, no girlfriends, he was bullied by his older siblings, his father didn’t pay any more attention to him than he needed to and his mother died giving birth to him, which might explain some of the resentment his father and siblings felt.
‘Tsk, no wonder this boy’s body is so frail and useless. He was underfed by his family, and now even here in this academy he was too scared to go to the cafeteria to enjoy some food.’
Lucian wasn’t a fan of cowards, so it was safe to say he felt some disdain for the original Lucian.
Walking across the grass on the way to his dorm, Lucian’s eyes began to moisten when he was out of sight.
“Regardless of everything that’s happened. At least I am alive…”
There were only a few times in his life that Lucian ever shed a tear, but this was the first time it was the result of positive emotions, rather than negative.
Lucian wasn’t afraid of death — he was afraid he’d never be able to finish his research and satisfy his scientific curiosity!
Looking at his surroundings, he noticed the architecture of the buildings fit the image of the Medieval style world he imagined this place to be even more. There were many youths of all shapes and sizes wandering about the school, whether in groups or alone, and they all had bright smiles on their faces.
Lucian walked over to the cafeteria building and pushed open the doors, ignoring the stares and walked over to the buffet area, picking up a few pieces of bread and some soup before finding an empty seat to sit in.
As more and more people spotted him, they looked over in his direction with smug smiles and disdain in their eyes. Their despise for him was obvious.
Lucian thought himself to be quite uncaring, but this was still somewhat annoying to endure.
However, he still had to eat.
“Chop chop! I don’t have all day! Hurry the f*ck up!” Out of nowhere, Lucian was forced out of thought by a rough and childish voice ringing out.
“S-sorry, L-lady Sofia!” A familiar looking boy frantically apologised and ran away, forgetting to take his fair share of food.
‘Interesting…’
Lucian cracked a slight smile at this scene, as he recognised this boy to be Roderic — the very same child who attempted to extort him for a few coins earlier in the day, right after he found himself reincarnated into his new body.
[Alert! Danger is nearby! Recommend action: Maintain a distance of at least 100 metres!]
But the surprises kept coming, with this being the second time his unknown AI activated.
Lucian’s eyes slightly widened when he heard the familiar voice ring in his mind once again, but his reasons were different this time.
The source of danger his AI was talking about happened to be the young girl who just scolded Roderic a few seconds ago.
‘I’m curious about this thing. How did it reincarnate with me? Or is it even the same AI that I remember? Because I don’t seem to recall it having the same features this thing has back in my old world?’
Lucian found it incredible that something could be brought along with him from his other life, if it even was from his other life.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
He decided to test his hypothesis now that he had the chance.
‘AI…? Scan the source of danger in front of me!’
Using the same prompts he remembered from his previous life, first informing the AI you were actually speaking to it by calling out ‘AI’ whether verbally or with his internal voice, and then voicing his command.
A few seconds passed where nothing happened, and Lucian began to suspect that perhaps he was wrong, and his AI implant didn’t reincarnate with him after all.
But just as he was about to give up and go back to eating his soup and bread, the mechanical voice of the AI returned to his mind once again.
[Scan complete!]
[Sofia (Last name unknown). Age: 15. Sex: Female. Vitality: 2.4, Agility: 2.2, Strength: 2.6, Mind: 0. Status: Angry, Hungry. Bleeding from below, seems to be her time of the month.]
A mental image of this girl, Sofia, projected itself into Lucian’s mind. It displayed not only a naked projection of her body, but also the various different parameters pertaining to her physique.
Although he was in the body of a 12 year old boy, Lucian was unbothered by the sight of a naked female, and instead was intrigued by the figures and statistics he was seeing.
***
‘Isn’t the average human’s stats supposed to be 1.0 for each? And that’s for a strong healthy adult male. If I recall correctly, the world record for a stat in any section was 1.8, so this means this 15 year old girl has surpassed the world record for the strength, agility, and vitality that has stood strong since the beginning of time in my previous world? And what’s this Mind stat?’
Lucian was very intrigued upon seeing Sofia’s stats, and couldn’t wait any longer to find out what his own were.
‘AI, Scan my own physique!’
A few seconds passed just like it did with the young girl, only the time required before Lucian received a reply was shorter than the girl’s.
[Scan complete!]
[Name: Lucian Verdan. Age: 12. Sex: Male. Vitality: 0.7, Agility: 0.6, Strength: 0.5, Mind: 0.1 Status: Curious, Hungry. In a state of slight dehydration and starvation.]
The same mental image appeared in Lucian’s mind, this time of himself. But there was one thing Lucian noticed immediately.
‘No foreign bodies?’
The scan of his body indicated that while he was starving and a little thirsty, there was nothing wrong with it. No injuries of any kind, with any that may have been there from beatings from Roderic et al having already healed.
But there was also no detection of anything inside his body that shouldn’t be there naturally either. This was concerning to Lucian, as the AI chip should have definitely come up on the scan. He knew this for a fact, as he had performed countless tens of thousands of self scans and external scans before, as his job as a scientist required him to, and every time his AI chip showed up in the scan.
‘What could this mean? The AI chip is a material object, subject to the same laws of mass preservation as everything else in this universe? It can’t just not be there or exist, especially when I confirmed its existence inside my mind already!’
Lucian thought to himself, thinking how fascinating of a discovery this was. If this were his previous world, this would at least warrant him a whole new research project with millions in extra funding!
Lucian’s lips gradually formed to create a mesmerising smile, creeping out the other students who were nearby to him. In a world like this one where there was little to no technology at all, having something as advanced as his AI implant to help him was akin to giving the entire path of future research and knowledge to a time traveller who went to the past.
If he wanted, Lucian could probably speed up this world’s development by centuries!
However, the excitement soon wore off, as some realisations soon dawned upon him.
‘How did the Original Lucian allow himself to become this weak…’
He was almost speechless when looking at the abysmal stats of his predecessor. He didn’t know what to think, other than ‘weak’.
The difference between himself and that Sofia girl should just be an anomaly. But just to make sure he decided to collect the stats and information of a few more students who sat around himself.
[Scan complete!]
[Name: Unknown. Age: 14. Sex: Male. Vitality: 1.6, Agility: 2.0, Strength: 1.8, Mind: 0. Status: Intrigued, Entertained. Body is in peak state.]
[Scan complete!]
[Name: Unknown. Age: 16. Sex: Female. Vitality: 2.0, Agility: 1.9, Strength: 1.9, Mind: 0. Status: Bored, Tired. Body is in peak state.]
After half a minute, Lucian had scanned two more students and obtained their data in his mind, scanning their bodies and displaying their stats.
‘Not as absurd as Sofia’s stats, but their stats are still definitely abnormal compared to my previous world. The people here are definitely stronger. And these are all only children, I have yet to scan an adult. My predecessor seems to be the only outlier though… Even the weakest of students here has stats slightly above 1.0… I’m starting to feel embarrassed for this kid.’
Lucian continued scanning the cafeteria. There wasn’t a single adult present except for the cook who was serving and handing out the food to the students, but even they had an overall physique above 1.
The rest were all students around the same age, between 14-16 years old. But Sofia’s stats remained the highest he had scanned out of the lot, and she gave him the greatest sense of danger.
As a scientist, Lucian knew what high stats meant — Vitality represented the body’s ability to heal, defend, and resist outside forces. Most common are viruses, infections, but also physical injuries like stab wounds and burns.
Agility represented the body’s reflexes and speed, measuring how fast they were and how well they were able to control their hand eye coordination, as well as maintain control over their bodies at speed.
Strength was the most straightforward — it measured both capacity to hold weight under stress, but also to exert force. It wasn’t necessarily about muscle mass but about muscle density.
But it wasn’t just that simple.
Stats weren’t a simple case of 1+1 = 2.
A person will all round stats of 1.0 across the board could lift 100kg, run 100m in 13 seconds, and had a general good resistance to viral infections, penetrations to the skin, and a good recovery time.
But a person with all round stats of 2.0 could theoretically lift up to 550kg, run 100m in 8 seconds, be able to resist most viruses and infections, and had triple the recovery time from wounds as someone with 1.0 in vitality.
While these figures were all estimations, and would require the person to exert their entire potential to pull off, it still gave a good representation of what was possible with certain levels of stats.
To put this into perspective, a big portion of the students gathered in this cafeteria were faster in a 100m sprint than the fastest human in history from his previous world, and could dead-lift more weight than the strongest bodybuilders in history.
This world was clearly not normal, and Lucian intended to find out why.
He also intended to find out why his own stats were so low in comparison…